In 2007, supported by an extraordinary team of family, friends, and medical staff, I stomped the snot out of a nasty cancer that was on its way to killing me. I've since learned that the way I did it has a lot in common with the advice of the "e-patients" movement, so I've changed my blogger name from Patient Dave to e-Patient Dave.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

A post on Paul Levy's blog about SEIU, a union I've mentioned before, led me to look into a new web site they've started, to slander Levy himself and the whole hospital.

As the post describes, they've put up signs at bus stops implying that the hospital is full of corruption and malfeasance, with a companion web site: "eyeonBI.org". I saw a "Share Your Story" link and went there to say how much I (and every employee I've spoken with) like the hospital, but look what I saw: (click to enlarge)

If you're not already familiar with this story, which has been going on for ages, it's summed up in the many comments on Paul's post.

Several months ago in a comment on a similar post I told an SEIU organizer "This gives organized labor a bad name. Why not go after some evil company??" And to me giving organized labor a bad name really is a problem. But, as shown in a link on Paul's post, it appears the union's leadership has ethical troubles of its own now:

The president of the Service Employees International Union said this week that he plans to consult with two labor reform groups in an effort to clean up his scandal-stained organization, beginning with a new ethics code and an internal watchdog commission.

But leaders of both groups said Wednesday that they were skeptical of Andy Stern's proposals.

"Why does he need a new code of ethics?" said Herman Benson, founder of the Assn. for Union Democracy. "People didn't know that what they were doing was wrong? It's preposterous."